Progress ~ Well, THAT bit´s done, after how long?Mystic Ark# Posted on June 23rd, 2008 05:04 PM by Gideon ZhiLast night at about 10:00PM Eastern, I *finally* finished mapping out the last of the embedded pointers in Mystic Ark´s insert file. All 6562 jumps in the script have now been assigned a unique identifier digit, with corresponding markers and targets for each. That´s 6562 copies and pastes. 6562 sets, 6562 writes. And you wonder why this is taking so long :p

That doesn´t mean that it´s ready to insert yet, I´m afraid. MKendora has written a simple utility to add *normal* pointer writes to the file; I´ve just run it, and the next step has me commenting out any potential false positives so inserting this thing doesn´t completely break the rom. This´ll take a while, but I don´t imagine it´ll take nearly as long as the *last* step took.

So yeah, progress. Nothing that I can show off, I´m afraid, but still. Progress.

Major Release ~ Two Million Hits! Live-A-Live v2.0 Deluxe Released!Live-A-Live# Posted on May 28th, 2008 07:38 PM by Gideon ZhiNot much else to say, really. It´s been a long road but we´re finally here, and from my *own* experience playing the game today, the wait was damn well worth it. I hope that you all feel the same way!

The new version includes...-560 kilobytes of English script: Twice the size of the original translation!-Main dialogue, menu, and battle fonts are now fully proportional!-Each chapter now has its own unique font - even the Japanese version can´t say this! Live-A-Live now sports a total of ten different fonts.-Kung Fu names are now Chinese, not Japanese!-Items, techniques, and equipment names expanded dramatically due to new fonts!

This is pretty much done, other than a (hopefully!) minor issue with the battle system. This is the first I´ve ever tinkered with actual z80 before, and so far it´s been a resounding success. Good game to start with!

Official announcement forthcoming once it´s cleaned up a bit. Here's a related video while you wait.

Progress ~ Rejoice! Script translation complete!Rejoice - Another Aretha Kingdom# Posted on March 3rd, 2008 10:35 PM by Gideon ZhiSilversonic just emailed me this afternoon to let me know that Rejoice´s script is done! It still needs an edit (mostly, aside from the stuff I did on my own a few months ago) but barring any major catastrophes, the remainder of the project should go pretty quickly.

So just what is Rejoice, you ask? Well, I think I´ll let it speak for itself:

Progress ~ Live-a-Live 2.0 close to completionLive-A-Live# Posted on January 13th, 2008 03:57 PM by Gideon ZhiIt´s taken a whole lot longer than anyone could have predicted, but I think we´ve finally fixed all of the little niggling technical issues. One particularly nasty one, just resolved, would corrupt your save data and replace characters with multiple Oersteds.

The scripts are all edited save for the final chapter, but of course due to that previously-mentioned save corruption, I need to restart the game from the beginning. Provided a speedy replay and no further technical problems (and maybe some wrangling with SNES9X´s cheat engine) an in-house betatest should be coming pretty soon, with a release following shortly thereafter. No promises, though! We thought the technicals had been resolved last September, but look how wrong we were!

Metal Max is an open, nonlinear RPG with a heavy focus on sidequests and tank tweaking. The main game has you chasing bounty heads and finding new vehicles for your entourage, but there�s so much other stuff to do! You can pimp your tanks with decals and accessories, you can buy furniture and wall hangings for your home, play with little critters that eat your money and grow to enormous proportions, or enjoy a host of minigames. Go hunting for this week´s target and become a rich and famous bounty hunter!

Miscellaneous ~ Front Page/Forum Integration# Posted on October 5th, 2007 06:51 AM by Gideon ZhiJust dropping a quick note to say that front page updates have been integrated into the Pantheon. You´ll be able to talk about posted news by hitting the "Discuss News" link at the bottom of each post from here on out. Enjoy!

Progress ~ SRW Gaiden - Technicals Mostly ResolvedSuper Robot Wars Gaiden# Posted on October 4th, 2007 08:28 AM by Gideon ZhiJust dropping a quick note to say that most of the technical issues in SRW Gaiden have been resolved. There are still some bad strings and/or crashes, occasionally, and the menu system needs quite a lot of textual work, but none of it should prove very challenging. The biggest "issue" is that speaker portraits garble when a unit gets destroyed. Not sure why, just yet.

Here are some snaps of working battle sequence text.

Progress ~ Super Robot Wars Gaiden - Script Inserted, KindaSuper Robot Wars Gaiden# Posted on September 28th, 2007 03:54 AM by Gideon ZhiIt still has a lot of technical problems, but the really good news is that all of the necessary pointer writes have been added to SRW Gaiden´s script. It´s... big, of course - roughly 800K of text, all of which is going to need to be edited. The font routine is also only semi-functional, but the stuff that IS working looks pretty good. Unfortunately, the stuff that IS working isn´t a lot of it.